Friday, June 6, 2014

The international hockey season in a short review (NHL, IIHF)

It was a heavy loaded season with an expanding KHL, a positive developing NHL, Olympics as one of the “High-End-Events”, an entertaining World Championship in Minsk plus the “evergreens”, the always very exciting WorldJuniorChampionships U20 and U18.

I did follow the probably best hockey-game ever with the gold-medal-game CAN vs SWE, although it was definitely not the most entertaining one. A surprising Stanley Cup finalist with the New York Rangers and a not so surprising one with the LA Kings. I also witnessed some very interesting international tendencies. Not a big surprise – because of some logic behind it – but still a “new proof” on the score-sheets:  The senior-national-teams of the high-end-hockey-nations are not two steps ahead of the nations ranked 7-12 anymore, it’s just one step. The Swiss did compete at eye-level vs the very best in the Olympics and this after the WC-silver-medal in 2013. France, Belarus did qualify for the quarterfinals in Minsk. Latvia did beat silver medallist Finland in Minsk… and the same improved Swiss did lose to Latvia in the Olympics and couldn’t qualify for the quarterfinals in Minsk. Results with big margins are dying out. The logic behind this development: To build a competitive senior-national-team is the much easier part than to do the same with the yearly junior-national-teams. Even smaller countries have a very good chance to recruit 22 competitive players in the age-groups from maybe 19 to 39. If you have just one good player every year you will have a competitive team. So, if the smaller countries do their homework they can nowadays quite easily develop a competitive senior-national-team. And you know what? These countries did do their homework and so… we have now tight games in senior-championship-games even e.g. between Canada and France. In today's globalized world we have brilliant hockey-teachers in a lot of countries, there are no big secrets about developing young hockey-players anymore. Also in France, Norway, Latvia, Denmark and Switzerland e.g. coaches and teachers know how to practice and how to develop hockey-techniques and smart tactical behavior.

It’s a different world if you look at the world-junior-championships. There you still can find a two-step-difference between the very best and the smaller, following countries and there is also a certain logics behind this because there your choice of players is just from one or two age-groups, means every year one just can chose from 19-20 or 17-18 years old. Canada e.g. has of course much more junior players on more or less the same level compared to e.g. a country like Denmark but once again: If Denmark “just” produces one good player every year… they will have a very good senior-national-team the sooner or later.

Coming back to the nowadays much tougher competition. What chances and what risks does this bring? The chances for more exciting and more tight games are much bigger. The chances to broaden our great sport of hockey in not so familiar hockey-countries yet are bigger than ever and this means: More "business" for all of us in the not so far distance is on the horizone. The risks: We have to be more careful than ever in terms of overrating “naked” results. If the competitions are getting more tight, the influence of the factor “being lucky or unlucky” will become even more significant. It’s a challenge for analysts, journalists and experts to respect this fact. Personally I like this development because we slowly but steadily will" wave goodbye" to the old times when world-class-hockey had some inbreeding tendencies. In the modern hockey world, classy hockey will be played in much more countries than ever before. Right so!

6th June 2014 / Thomas Roost